Update on the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route

The seventh short-sea service on the Caspian Sea has been added, facilitating traffic flows along the Middle Transport Corridor. Crossing the Caspian Sea is considered the bottleneck in the corridor between Europe and China, which is experiencing explosive growth this year. Railway Supply magazine writes about this with reference to RailFreight.

Only in September of this year, the number of ships in the seas in Central Asia doubled from three to six. A seventh vessel was later added, a spokesman for KTZ Express said at the European Silk Road summit recently held in Duisburg. Since the capacity of the Middle Corridor is still limited, any additional capacity is welcome.

New Warsaw metro trains being tested

The Caspian sea crossing, which is either between the Azerbaijani port of Baku and Aktau or Kuryk in Kazakhstan, or Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan, is a lengthy procedure. The Baku-Aktau journey for example is 350-km long. According to Kelvin Tang from CEVA Logistics, this journey takes seven days to be completed.

One of the problems of the Middle Corridor is the long waiting time for a vessel in the Caspian or Black Sea. As a result, ports are easily overloaded, and it takes longer than necessary to transfer cargo to the train. This makes the transit time on this route less attractive.

Depending on the type of vessel, the carrying capacity is 350 TEU or 125 TEU. The six vessels that passed the Caspian Sea in September have a total capacity of 1200 TEU. It is not clear how much capacity the seventh vessel has added, but in the best case, the fleet of seven vessels will be enough for 1550 TEU. With one additional departure per week, the fleet will be able to handle 6,600 TEUs of cargo per week, handling around 70 trains.

Since the war began in Ukraine, interest in the Middle Corridor has grown. Volumes that were traditionally channeled through the Northern Corridor through Russia have now moved to the Middle Corridor, but they are very few and account for about 1 percent.

If you look at volume growth in the Middle Corridor itself, the numbers are more significant. According to ADY Container, which participates as a railway company providing traction for the corridor, freight traffic in the first ten months increased by 45% compared to the corresponding period of the previous year.

The main task remains the organization of transportation, said the director of the railway company. Currently, the transit time is around fifty to sixty days, and the cost 30 per cent higher than the northern route. In such a case, ocean shipping is more attractive for many shippers.

Railway news you might have missed:

Execution for sabotage on the railway